Saturday, October 14, 2006

As promised, this is the detailed description of my delectable dinner Friday night at Ristorante Al Dente.

Before dinner, which I came to pretty much straight from work, I had a delightfully refreshing vokda and 7-Up, since I got there a little bit earlier than everyone else.

This is the pizza bread with basil aioli that they serve as their free bread. It's light and delicious, with just a hint of cheese on top, and of course the aioli is super creamy and delicious and flavorful and just plain dreamy. We had two plates. One day, I want to go there and just sit and eat like five free plates pizza bread and pretend I got stood up and then leave. LOL

I was torn between what to order for an appetizer. I was thinking of prosciutto wrapped around melon, or veal carpaccio, or the sampler with all kinds of delicious antipasto, or even the cream of mushroom soup. So I ended up ordering an entree pizza that could be shared. This perfectly thin (crispy crust that also was chewy once you got past that perfect crunch) delight had Italian bacon, porcini mushrooms, onions and, in generous portions, parmesan riggiano.

OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD.

This is what pizza is supposed to be like. None of that greasy Pizza Hut/Domino's crap. This is gourmet pizza. This is God's gift to the taste buds. This makes California Pizza Kitchen seem like DiGiorno's.

The entree I had -- which I forgot to take a picture of because as soon as it came and the waiter grated some parmesan on top of I dug right into it -- was rigatoni (perfectly al dente) with a delicious red sauce and ... lobster.

Oh yeah, baby!

And then, of course, there was dessert!

These are the profiteroles with a chocolate sauce enhanced by just the right amount of high-end booze. I poured some into my coffee and ... *drool*

Unfortunately, the profiteroles pretty much sucked ass. They were dry and spongy and the cream filling was more than bleah.

Should have went with the tiramisu, which one of my friends had, or the chocolate souffle.

Oh well ... the rest of the meal made up for that ... plus I stole some tiramisu. Heh.

I went out for a fancy-schmancy dinner to celebrate a friend's birthday last night.

We went to one of my favorite restaurants, Ristorante Al Dente, a great place with great Italiano cuisine.

I didn't get too dressed up, because I had to head there straight from work (ugh), which explains the work-casual attire you see pictured to your right.

A detailed post -- including a delectable accounting of the meal, which I'm sure will leave a lot of you hungry if not famished after reading it -- will follow this, sometime later today, when I am more coherent.

It will be accompanied by a few more pics -- I managed to remember to take photos of almost all the courses I had, save for the entree. I put the camera to the side and just kind of forgot about it when the waiter placed the plate in front of me.

Friday, October 13, 2006

So my usually uneventful Thursday evening was interrupted around 10:30 p.m. by some kind of weird brownout thing -- I heard a kind of loud "thunk" outside and then the voltage suddenly went all weird, lights went down to low orange, air con went funky, etc.

I looked outside, and everyone still had power, even the streetlights. Just my apartment building.

I thought I was totally screwed.

I called the power utility here, and they answered after two rings -- miraculous! -- and the guy took my address and the problem I was having, along with my phone number. I really didn't expect much. But he calls back a while later, telling me a crew was on the way and clarifying directions. A little while later, the crew showed up, I re-explained my problem, and one of them went up in the bucket. A few minutes later, after some adjustments to a doohickey and other stuff, my power was back on!

Full resolution in less than an hour and a half ... late at night.

I admit that I'm still stunned.

I didn't get the two guys' names, but tomorrow I'm going to write a letter to the GM and the manager of the dispatch station and thank them profusely and commend the guys who got me full, clean power back in such a quick time.

It was just in time to allow me to play World of Warcraft with My Favorite Person for about 30 minutes before she headed to work. :)

Oh ... here's my character, a human warrior.

Don't he look just like me, if I were a video character? And fit? And muscular? And could grow a mustache? LOL

He'll get more impressive as I level him up and get him some better gear.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

There's not much better than going to the post office and getting a package filled with goodies, is there?

Today a package fromMy Favorite Person came in. She mailed it Saturday, her time (Sunday here) and it actually got here when promised by the U.S. Postal Service -- my Tuesday late afternoon, and a package slip was in my box the very next morning, my Wednesday. That's pretty fast shipping, for the Post Office.

And, lucky me, it WAS filled with goodies. Woohoo!!

The main thing was World of Warcraft. My Favorite Person has a gaming addiction, and she likes to spread it to me. First it was Diablo: Lord of Destruction, then it was Neverwinter Nights, now it's World of Warcraft. And since SHE's playing that means I will be playing. It's installing as I write this, so she can get her fix, with me, when she gets up, all bright and early. LOL

There was also something for my mom -- My Favorite Person is trying to bribe dear old mom ... I think to get nekkid pictures of me when I was a kid! She's a dirty-minded one, My Favorite Person, which is why I like her so much. Heh.

Also included were some Jolly Rancher candy, a set of kokopelli earrings (see the early HNT from Guam below) and a kokopelli pen. She remembered how much I like kokopellis when she was recently in New Mexico. Ain't she sappy? LOL

The next thing was just TOO funny. Precooked teriyaki meatballs ... in the mail! LMAO

Well, I had some for dinner and am not dead from E. coli or botulism, so all is well.

The final items ... seductive, sexual pictures of My Favorite Person ... NOT. I wish. I really, REALLY do. It would be nice to have some hard copies ... heh.

THE EARLY HNT FROM GUAM!• As promised, here is a look at the earrings ... well, one of them. Click the image to see it in a little more detail.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

When I was a kid, there were only two holidays that really mattered: Christmas and Halloween.

Christmas, of course, meant presents, which usually meant toys. And Halloween meant candy.

When you're a kid, there's not much that matters more than toys and candy. Might as well be water and oxygen.

OK, I will admit that Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays too -- if you ever tasted my parents' cooking, you'd understand why. Just typing this has made me crave roast turkey, stuffing, mashed taters and gravy. Fuck I'm hungry!

OK ... where was I?

Oh yes ... candy and Halloween.

If you were a kid after the start of the 1980s, Halloween is a much different thing. We didn't worry about X-raying candy. Parents didn't worry overly much about sending kids out in the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating. Homemade Rice Crispy treats in Plastic Wrap was an acceptable treat; it wasn't thrown out. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid.

Same goes for the candy. There is SO much more variety these days. Candy options were a bit more limited. The bulk was hard candy -- Lifesaver lollipops or Dumdums, root beer barrel candy, butterscotch discs, peppermints. There was bubblegum. The PREMIUM houses were the ones that gave out Hershey's miniatures. The GREAT houses gave out regular-sized candy bars, but those were rare.

Back then, after you were done, you sat down with your brothers and sisters and worked out trades for your favorites and theirs.

And boy did you make your stash last as long as possible -- helped tremendously by mothers not very willing to let children indulge their sweet teeth (sweet tooths?). They would let you have a few pieces, then would put the bags (labeled, naturally, so the kids wouldn't fight over which was whose) into the kitchen cabinet over the refrigerator, where kids couldn't reach without climbing on the countertops. It would be doled out a few pieces at a time. I always had a strong suspicion that some of it went to sweet-toothed (sweet-teethed) parents. I know I would have stolen candy from my kids, if I had any!

And for those of you who haven't seen the larger version of my October avatar ... I present Evil DZER!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Remember when you were a kid and, for whatever reason, your parents weren't around to make you get out of the rain? And so you played in the rain -- getting wet and not caring, stomping around in the puddles and the mud? Sure, you usually got yelled at when you got home, sodden and muddy and messy, but it sure was worth it.

That was my Sunday.

As most of you know, Guam is a tropical island. That means we only have two seasons -- the rainy season and the not-so rainy season. We're smack dab in the middle of rainy season and will be until January or so.

What that means, if you're a golfer, is that you have two choices during rainy season: you either play golf in the rain, or you don't play golf. We played golf, even though there hasn't been a sunny day in more than a couple of weeks.

We got to the course and it was raining a bit, and it picked up as we were paying, so we decided to grab an early lunch in the clubhouse. When we were done, we headed out in a light sprinkle. It rained on us for the first two or three holes, then it remained relatively clear and non-rainy until the last three holes. On 16 and 17, we played in a steady sprinkle, and on 18 we played under a more steady shower.

The course was mostly muddy and mucky, and the rough was insanely tough to hit out of; not only did the wet conditions make the rough tough, but I guess they hadn't been able to mow it at all in a while, so it was thick and tall too.

We still had a lot of fun. Again, I started out slow -- I didn't get a score as low as a bogey until the fifth hole, but I steadied out then and closed with a 48 on the front. The back nine was a much different story -- two pars and six bogeys. However, I did have a meltdown on a par four, with a quadruple freaking bogey. Even with that super-high score, I shot a 46 on the back for a 94 overall, which is a pretty good score for me, especially considering the conditions. S ended up with a good score for the weather too, a 97. My godson A had his usual good putting day, including holing out a couple of six-footers and one eight-foot putt.

I left the course pretty soaked, with my lower pants and shoes caked in mud, and splatters of mud all over my pants legs and even on my shirt, thanks to some splashy shots. But it felt pretty good.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching some television and napping for a couple of hours (in fact, I just woke up LOL).

Now it's time for a couple of DVDs and a little bit of advance work -- after I finish watcing "Forrest Gump" on TNT ... it's one of those movies that once I come across it while flipping through channels, I pretty much watch all the way through.